Ranks Of South Korea's Billionaires Hit Record; China's Mass Affluent Market Surges

Tom Burroughes

4 May 2015

The number of ultra-high net worth individuals in parts of Asia-Pacific continues to grow, according to a barometer of the fortunes of the wealthy. The Forbes South Korea Rich List shows there are a record 35 billionaires in the country, with strong South Korean equities providing a helping hand.

In another country – China – and at the lower end of the wealth scale, there is still impressive growth, despite talk of deceleration in that country’s economy.

Data from Forbes and the Beijing-based wealth management firm CreditEase show mainland China is expected to have 15.28 million mass affluent people – those with investible assets of between RMB600,000 ($96,717) and RMB6.0 million - by the end of this year. This marks a rise of 10 per cent compared with last year (source: South China Morning Post). At the end of 2014, the mass affluent population numbered 13.88 million – an increase from 11.97 million at the end of 2013.

Such rapid growth, even if the figures need to be interpreted with some care and taking account of time-lag effects from markets, demonstrate why the region is seen as a strong growth market for wealth management and private banking, even though some players haven’t found the arena as easy to penetrate as they might have hoped.

As far as South Korea is concerned, Samsung Electronics chairman Lee Kun-Hee remains king of the heap as the country’s richest man, with a net worth of $13.3 billion, up from $12.9 billion a year ago. Lee’s family members also have a strong showing on the list. His son Jay Y Lee is ranked third with a net worth of $7.8 billion, and is steering the giant Samsung Group while his father remains in hospital after a heart attack last May.

Jay Y Lee’s sister, Lee Seo-Hyun, saw her wealth soar by 84 per cent (number 14 on the list, $2.25 billion) after the IPO of Cheil Industries. She is the co-president of the firm with her older sister, Lee Boo-Jin (number 13, $2.3 billion), who is now South Korea’s richest woman.

Ranked second on the list is the chairman and chief executive of AmorePacific, Suh Kyung-Bae, whose wealth more than tripled to $9.2 billion this year.

In fourth place is Hyundai Motor’s Chung Mong-Koo, who saw his net wealth decrease to $5.6 billion, from $7.1 billion last year, Forbes said.

South Korea's stockmarket shows total returns - capital growth plus reinvested dividends - of more than 12 per cent since the start of January this year.